This morning I met up with Nadav and his team up in the Galillee mountains. Our main mission was to ring Goldcrests. This seems to be a very good winter for this rare bird in Israeli standards. In this particular spruce grove, we had 10-15 birds, which is an Israeli record I guess!
As you understand we caught nothing; the birds just wouldn't come down low enough to get caught. I spent some time trying to photograph them but no results at all - they're so fast! This is how my images looked like:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh2D6pu6T70CT28EUizGqhkevbUsppOfg0dsAyRM0em9jYk3OdDxNzO5ayIF-ArjFUh3yfVXeE_KaGiTDRIAKOIaNYGofL3RSzXZ179v1u2HCsqXtVwtNjpFZo5E9dGMuHuqtNj763n2AR/s400/nothing.jpg)
But this is not totally useless as these pretty spruce branches could make excellent perches for future projects:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNJEf0kkRMULhAc-z6OJ60zCeUVdcmk4zampbbMi4tQpcz_a0axU695U-MgAU-foS6d9mmRVLe9cbZIUOdJe6LKSgrV71HJO0b6fYL-CLXqhWqMdcidsVYn2_8JpdRt7wx597B69725-zQ/s400/goldplover.jpg)
Anyway, after that failure we had some time to check the beautiful pistachio and almond orchards of Birya. This is Israel's prime site for Pine Bunting, and indeed we had two - I had a female (all too brief) and Nadav had a cooperative male. They were hanging around with 30 Yellowhammers - another good bird:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtn-0qW8zGdUA7UgsM-Oe9VxzfUXkH-ytK5Ky-Nba209L2AFaB3ZrXcSM7hv5Q9amtO2FqLVxm8HjiAbbgeRbEiRFlCYUMIp991Pn99m55RpHnNP1PCGdswQcjgEhLMXMS2KD9HVcrVylH/s400/yellow2.jpg)
Apart for that a flock of 20 Woodlarks were nice:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgXvfSFF1-9GTcXEJx2W1fUkrlh8tAhxLac_-Njf3woK079ZCpm8Iafuxn9GA-hlu-Ac02ivAco6wB-7aLMh6mp4MtEtZP0GiJunyik2ams9Av4tggcd4_ZWjcpsN-VO0osxsPgv8lhlPS/s400/woodlark1.jpg)
They actaully perch on trees!
hahaha!
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